Status of Women Committee on March 22nd, 2010

[Carey Calder]

I don't know if it's literally someone slamming a door in your face, but it's what opportunities are provided. So building on one of the things about pay equity, if a certain amount of dollars is available for types of jobs, if those jobs are just the entry level and they're not getting the apprenticeship agreement, then they could be entry level labourers year after year. There's no question, just by their nature, apprenticeships are male-dominated environments. In many cases, it's about what opportunities are already there. So you're hearing about things because your uncle has worked there or maybe your dad. That's how things are; that's the network connection that apprenticeships were originally based on.

To get past that, sometimes, when we're talking about having women in non-traditional occupations, we're not looking for women to get into these fields to be one of the guys. We're looking for women to be working in these fields as women. We're now looking at how to increase the participation. If there wasn't a plan in place on how to deal with it or how that looks, there is an intimidation factor somewhere, and I'm not sure what we need to do. I guess that's the work you're doing, providing a road map on how things have to change to increase the participation.

I guess one of the questions I've been having with the committee, because I'm not aware of the work, is how much information you already have about retention for women in non-traditional roles to date. What are building on, based on recommendations from retention strategies thus far?

I didn't realize that specific work was being done with aboriginal women as part of this panel, but it would be interesting to see more work with the NAOs about what we can contribute to the work we've already been doing for over 10 years in the employment and training sector.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Politics are a non-traditional field for women. It is often said that politics is a men's world, even though more and more women are entering the political arena. There are still not enough women in politics.

It surprised me, Ms. Phaneuf, to hear you say that about 30% of the women did not look for jobs. Why was that? Was the pressure on them to great? Did they feel threatened? Why is it that women in general tend to throw in the towel in such situations?

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

The numbers were small, so for it to be 30%... Our target was small, so it could even be a bit of a skewed number.

Some of the women actually did graduate but did not apply for jobs. It's not that they didn't finish the training. They may not have applied for jobs afterwards, or the jobs were not available.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

They did not look for...

They received training, but it is not clear why they did not look for work in their field.

[Lorraine Phaneuf]

We're going to try to get that research done, and I hope we'll come up with some answers. It's very difficult to get an answer from a person who has not been successful on why they're not successful. So that's always a challenge to get them to say, because they'll say the words they think you expect them to say, such as they didn't have child care, the training allowance wasn't enough to live on. We may need further research to figure that out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

A little under five minutes are left, and I would like to ask a question of the panel.

It's recognized...and I think it's following up on Ms. Brown's question, the idea of women going into entrepreneurial jobs and going to banks. We know what banks have always said. I mean, some of the work done on indicators for women going into business is that banks have a gender neutral policy in which they require certain concrete pieces of chattel to lend money. It is well known that only certain women have the concrete pieces of chattel. Many women don't. So then they have to go to a male person, either the father or the brother or the uncle, to put up the piece of chattel for them.

We had brought forward, as the government of that day, something called women's enterprise centres, in which women could do the kind of microcredit that Ms. Demers was talking about. It was only for women to go to. It helped women to develop a work plan. It lent them tiny amounts of money if they wanted, and they didn't have to put up the usual chattel. They just had to have a good work plan, one in which the women's enterprise centres kind of shuffled them along.

Is that occurring still, and do you think that would be very helpful for aboriginal women?

[Denise Thomas]

Yes, I think it would be very helpful.

In the past we always had Aboriginal Business Canada. I think it's kind of on the wayside now. Of course, one of the problems was always that you needed that 15% or 20% equity down to even start a business. We never could find that amount of money, and you weren't allowed to borrow it.

So I think that would work, the micro-program. It could be something that could work.

[Carey Calder]

We can also share with you the work that the Native Women's Association of Canada is doing about the financial literacy program within that economic development framework. Financial literacy within aboriginal communities really is needed for the women. What also comes with that is the recognition that the typical requirement that would normally have to be in place to start these types of loans or to start these types of enterprises perhaps has to be reconsidered or re-evaluated so that it can appropriately support what's going on. Again, we have to also recognize some of the other contributions or other types of work that's already being done by aboriginal women. That could be credited towards that type of situation.

We'll definitely follow up with more information for the committee to review about that work that's been done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

I would like to thank the witnesses for coming today and for giving us a very thorough and comprehensive understanding of how difficult it is for aboriginal women to go into non-traditional jobs--although, it would seem, many jobs that we consider to be traditional in the non-aboriginal communities are in fact non-traditional for aboriginal women.

Thank you very much.

We are adjourned.